Related papers: Has Science Established that the Cosmos is Physica…
Perhaps more than any other of the physical sciences, cosmology exemplifies the inevitable contact between science and philosophy, including the problem of the demarcation criteria that distinguish science from non-science. Although modern…
Quantum theory has been proved as an outstanding mystery in modern science. The predictions of science have turned out to be probabilistic. The principle of determinism has failed. For systems like weather, earthquakes, rolling dices etc...…
In the past century many fundamental results on unpredictability, undecidability and uncertainty have compelled scientists to grapple with the idea that some questions may never be resolved within our current theories. While this…
However, the observations encompassed by classical physics excludes the observer from the physical reality, yet the deep-down understandung of nature --{\it the quantum theory}-- can not avoid the intrusion of observer into the measurement…
During the last three decades, there has been a growing realization among physicists and cosmologists that the relation between particle physics and cosmology may constitute yet another successful example of the unity of science. However,…
Our knowledge about the universe has increased tremendously in the last three decades or so --- thanks to the progress in observations --- but our understanding has improved very little. There are several fundamental questions about our…
Cosmological models that invoke a multiverse - a collection of unobservable regions of space where conditions are very different from the region around us - are controversial, on the grounds that unobservable phenomena shouldn't play a…
The fundamental physical theories that interpret and explain behaviour of matter in nature are dependent on several unobservables and insensibles in their construction. While a rigorous natural philosophy cannot take them for granted, there…
Quantum Mechanics, almost 80 years after its arrival, is a well established and experimentally not falsified theory. It has predicted and explained a whole series of natural phenomena of a very delicate nature. But its interpretation has…
It is a widespread belief that results like G\"odel's incompleteness theorems or the intrinsic randomness of quantum mechanics represent fundamental limitations to humanity's strive for scientific knowledge. As the argument goes, there are…
Quantum mechanics, one of the most successful theories in the history of science, was created to account for physical systems not describable by classical physics. Though it is consistent with all experiments conducted thus far, many of its…
This paper examines the incommensurability thesis - one of the most important and controversial ideas to emerge from the simultaneous work of Kuhn and Feyerabend. In the first half, I discuss three aspects of incommensurability -…
We lay the groundwork for a formal framework that studies scientific theories and can serve as a unified foundation for the different theories within physics. We define a scientific theory as a set of verifiable statements, assertions that…
Physical cosmology tries to understand the Universe at large with its origin and evolution. Observational and experimental situations in cosmology do not allow us to proceed purely based on the empirical means. We examine in which sense our…
Some attack scientific rationality, others defend it, but both miss the point. What both parties take to be scientific rationality is actually a species of irrationality masquerading as scientific rationality. The current orthodox…
We still lack any consensus about what one is actually talking about as one uses quantum mechanics. There is a gap between the abstract terms in which the theory is couched and the phenomena the theory enables each of us to account for so…
First, this paper broaches the definition of science and the epistemic yield of tenets and approaches: phenomenological (descriptive only), well-founded (solid first principles, conducive to deep understanding), provisional (falsifiable if…
This is the first of a series of papers that we intend to publish about the epistemology of fundamental physics in its current state. One of the main objectives of these papers is to improve our understanding of fundamental physics (and…
Why is the universe comprehensible? How is it that we can come to know its regularities well-enough to exploit them for our own gain? In this essay I argue that the nature of our comprehension lies in the mutually agreed upon methodology we…
Along with weaving together observations, experiments, and theoretical constructs into a coherent mesh of understanding of the world around us, physics over its past five centuries has continuously refined the base concepts on which the…